Edit Items Part 1

The item names and descriptions are now displayed and can be edited. The text is stored in plaintext in the ROM. But there are serveral words (like "from" or "statue") which are loaded from some kind of text library which contains words that are often used. These words are still missing until I figure out how they are loaded.
The item "Will" is displayed with it's correct item name and description:

The item "Statue of Hope" misses the word "Statue" in it's name and description because this word is loaded from the text library.

The name of the item "Red Jewel" is changed to "Rat Jewel" and loaded back to the ROM:

The next step will include the selection of the item handler. Thanks to lytron who discovered where the item handler pointers are stored in the rom (http://pantalytron.com/blog7.php/sympathy-for-the-manafreak-3) I can implement this in a short period of time.
I will also try to find out how an item graphic and it's animation is loaded and try to display it in the editor.

Display and edit tileset names

It's now possible to view and edit the name for every tileset. This will enhance the clarity for the user if he can assign his own name for a tileset. This will also be done the same way for all future elements (Maps, sprites,...).
The tileset names are stored in and loaded from a xml file. It will be possible to support different languages just by changing the xml file.

Another small progress:
Tilesets 1, 2 and 14 (can be seen in the screenshot) are now displayed correctly. The issue was a wrong byte offset where I started to read the tilesets.

GaiaTheCreator v.0.0.1.0

As promised you can download the current version of the editor when you follow this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzwgdg993nvmcfn/GaiaTheCreator%20%280.0.1.0%29.zip

The current features of the editor:

• Display every uncompressed (15 Tilesets) and compressed graphics (118 Tilesets)
• View the tilesets with different palettes (not all of them are displayed correct yet)
• Edit the tilesets
• Write the tilesets back to the ROM
• Beware: Only the US ROM of Illusion of Gaia is supported yet

I'm looking forward for your feedback so that the development of the editor will go in a direction that satisfies it's users :)

Compression Part 2

Graphics compression is working now. At least in a way so that the game doesn't crash anymore. To achieve this I maually limit the size of the compressed tileset data so that it doesn't exceed it's original size and overwrites other data.
To demonstrate it I painted the fisherman's sweater from green to blue:

Here is the result in the game:

The compression routine still needs to be improved since there are still some graphic issues within the Enix Logo and the title screen.
It will be necessaey to deal with the changing size of the compressed graphics as they are edited. I still need to figure out how to handle it that no game data is overwritten.
In the coming days I will upload the first version of the editor so you can play with it a little.

Compression Part 1

A little update with the latest progress of the editor:
The graphics compression routine is already partly working which can be seen in this screenshot:

This screenshot is taken from the ZSNES editor running a ROM which has been edited in the editor.
The game logo has been edited on the editor, the word TEST can be seen in the 'G' letter. The other part of the logo is unfortunatley still erroneous. The game crashes after a game slot is chosen and the actual game should start..
Still need to figure out the error in the compression routine.

Furthermore I did some code refactoring to make everything more clear. The length of the decompressed graphics is now evaluated. Thereby I found 18 more tilesets which were overseen before. So now I think every compressed tileset can now be edited.

There are some uncompressed graphics which I want to display as a next step.

Hope to figure out the compression problem as soon as possible so I can upload the first version of the editor!

Edit tiles

You can now edit tiles and save them back to the project file. To edit a tile select a color from the palette and fill the desired pixel in the tile image with that color.
As an example I put a circle in the yellow round sprite thing.

To write the edited tile back to the ROM I need to adapt the compression routine from Python to C# which I already started to work on.
When this is accomplished I will upload the current version of the editor.

Mysterious castle

Can anyone remember if this castle graphic was actually  used in the game? I don't think I have seen this before..